Monthly Archives: March 2009

Its a sunny sunny day today! The weather is surely turning to Summer and we’re excited to be outside as much as we can be jamming in the sun by the beautiful river here in Saskatoon.

But wait! That picture up there has no sun in it? I know but its a cool picture to say the least and more than pretty enough to be there.

Idea! Some demos and pics for the blogy blog here? Some nice pics are on their way (when I remember to bring the camera home) and we actually did up 2 demos last night! Voyno will cook up some internet magic and we’ll put some of the best ones up soon.

so we quite possibly have finished off our Vangelis gigs. Even that possibility made some people cry. No more cheap kicks on Wednesdays. The show is still going on but we just need to get down to recording. Speaking of we’re booked in the studio very soon. We’re probably going to go in there and rip out as many tracks as possible.

Well I’ve been baraged with music from all over in the past 3 or 4 days. Voyno generally sends me a song or two per day to give a listen to which leads me off chasing new bands. Then Prince comes along with 3 new albums!!! I also just put the new U2 on my turntable and my sister lent me all of her City and Colour cds. This is all on top of my decision to listen to Bob Dylan seriously which is no small picnic

So that’s what I do now, I listen to music non-stop. I could do this as a job I think.

For the past two months or so we have been writting a new song every week. Music is our currency and the more we create the richer we are essentially (except we don’t have all that much money right now). Voyno though, being a mastermind thinker, ponderer or problem solver, whatever you want to call him, came up with an idea to stretch our currency over a wider area.

Being in tune with your emotions is one of the important parts of making music. We hope that every song we write has meaning to us, to the listeners or to the drunks that happen into the bar we’re playing at. One way or another someone’s emotions are being fed by the tunes. Voyno considered this for an afternoon and came up with a great idea. “Let’s play our songs in different moods”.

So that’s where we’re at tonight. As long as nobody got cold feet and felt we weren’t ready for it. If you come on out to Refuse to Sit Down at Vangelis then you are sure to get the option of calling out a mood. If we choose your mood, we play the next song in that mood. Keeps us interested, and you get some say in the music making. A win win situation if you ask me.

An Example: Chillin on the beach on a warm summers day. We’ll play something that makes us feel that way. What do you say?

Last night I was at a steak night fundraiser. It was a great time even though I ate chicken instead of steak (it was a choice I made). The whole thing got me to thinking about hawking stuff to help yourself out. This fundraiser was for the school orchestra that my sister plays in and that I played in for years so I didn’t have too many problems shelling out $15 for a delicious meal. But how do you get past dealing with your family and sell stuff to the masses?

Almost as if my question was meant to be answered, a friend of mine came over to my table for a chat. Turns out he took up a new job as a vacuum sales guy. Of course I asked him just how he could go to strangers and convince them to buy vacuums…hold up I forgot a key ingredient here…

I was wondering how people sell stuff because I cannot bring myself to push ArmsUp t-shirts on people. Every gig we go to we bring a big box of shirts to sell to people, but when it comes down to the actual selling we always shit the bed…

Back to the story of vacuum sellers, steak night and my conundrum. My buddy tells me that it sucks selling stuff so he just had to swallow a bit of his pride and do it. He suggested that we get someone famous to wear our shirt at gigs. Someone who just wouldn’t mind pushing the shirt onto people. The vacuum brochure has examples of celebrities that own the ol’ cleaning system so why won’t it work for us?

Anyone know any famous people that want to hang out at our shows in a pretty cool t-shirt?

Peace,Love&GoodVibesSnowDove,ArmsUp

p.s. If you don’t buy a vacuum you’re liable to die from spores, dust or worse